Personal Heroes
by chidoriprime
Summary: A war hero's son reflects upon the man he never got the chance to meet, and decides to interview and record the stories told by the friends, family, and various allies and 'acquaintances' who meet and fought alongside his father; from the earliest days of his childhood up to the last, fateful days of the Reaper War.
1. Chapter 1

Not everyone knows the full truth about their personal heroes because history has a really annoying habit of distorting details for its own benefit. They don't like to see their shinning supermen revealed to be nothing more than that, just ordinary men who have the same human weaknesses as any other person out there. They want to show heroes as having no weaknesses, no faults, and no blemishes to detract from their status as gods among men.

Commander John Alan Shepard, a man who spent half his life living aboard ships in space, who became a war hero by single-handedly halting a batarian raid on Elysium during the Skyllian Blitz, and who earned the distinction of becoming the first human member of the Citadel Council's fable Specters, was one such man.

He stopped Sovereign and the rouge turian Saren, was killed but resurrected by the human supremacist group Cerberus to stop the Collecters, and was the man who rallied the galaxies' inhabitants to fight back against the Reaper invaders. And in the end, Shepard choose to take control of the Reapers, dying in the process of becoming their new master intelligence, an intelligence that came to reflect the Commander's own moral code of peace and cooperation, directing the Reapers to repair all the damage they had caused during the war.

A modern day Jesus Christ figure, as many a Christian would tell you these days, and a bright, untainted legend to all.

But that's the thing. That's not the real man. Nobody really seems to know who the real Commander Shepard is anymore.

Everyone paints this perfect picture of a fearless warrior who stood firm in the face of a galactic catastrophe and nobly sacrificed himself for the greater good of all, but nobody remembers that Shepard was only one man, a guy who was just as scared as the rest of us, who wondered whether he was making a difference in a vicious war that seemed doomed to failure no matter what he did.

He had sleepless nights plagued by nightmares; he mourned the loss of anyone who he lost under his command when they died under his command in spite of his best efforts. He was always uncomfortable about being the center of attention, and he always insisted that he was just a regular soldier, nothing more or less.

In other words, John Shepard just thought of himself as human as any other person out there. And I know that better than anyone alive.

After all, I am his son. And Mom has never once tried to bullshit me with anything but the truth about Dad.

….


	2. Chapter 2

I suppose you want to know a little about myself before we get started here so you aren't confused by who I am.

My name is Jason Williams, currently a 22-year-old student of the mechanical engineering college here on Elysium, and approaching the very last months of his senior year, and quite happy with the fact that he's remained in the top five of his classes after all this time. I'd like to think that I've gotten to the point in my life where I've become a mechanical prodigy; not only can I work technical miracles with an omni-tool that would make even the best quarian mechanics jealous (excluding my mentor and a very old friend of the family who can still kick my can at everything related to mechanical engineering), but I'm probably the only one on Earth or anywhere who still knows how to take apart and put together old internal combustion engines on cars and motorcycles from the 20's and 21's and spends huge chunks of his free time restoring said cars and bikes to pristine conditions.

…What? You think a guy like me can't have a weird-sounding hobby just like every else in the world? Hey, I may know how the galaxy's tech works inside and out, but there's just something relaxing about working on older machines that don't have more haptic interfaces and circuit boards than mufflers and motor grease.

I was one of the very first babies born in the year after what everyone now calls the Reaper War, along with my twin sister Lucy. My mom is Ashley Williams, one of the members of my dad's old ground team back in the day, a Lt. Commander of the Systems Alliance Marines, and a former Council Spectere. Once the war ended, she became part of the enormous recovery effort to rebuild what the Reapers had destroyed during the war, helping with clean-up and restoring order to a lot of regions that had descended into chaos during the occupation of Earth. After Lucy and I were born, she declined anymore missions involving combat, and settled for a base position on Earth where she could still be a member of the military while raising the two of us. It was tricky at first for her, being a single mom and all, but she had a great support network in her family and the friends she had made on the Normandy.

That came in handy at times. Sometimes, when she needed to take care of things back on base or she needed to go off-world for work she made sure we had someone looking after us. Sometimes we stayed with family like our two grandmothers or our aunts. But there were times when we actually had some of the old Normandy crew keep an eye on us. Mainly two people in particular: my dad's best friend Garrus, and his wife Tali. The first time I met them when I was four or five, I couldn't stop staring at them. They were literal the very first turian and quarian I had ever met, so to a toddler, I didn't know what to think of this weird-looking two-legged lizard and a bird-footed lady in a suit. But when they started playing with me and Lucy, I stopped thinking about how odd they looked and just laughed at how funny they were. That was the first time I saw Tali's drone Chakkita too, when Tali brought is out and let us chase it around the living room trying to catch it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever at the time, and every time they came to visit us as kids I think I would also pester Tali to bring Chakkita back out again.

Garrus and Tali became like another set of parents for me: Garrus was that cool uncle who had a thousand stories to tell, while Tali was like an aunt or an older sister I could look up to and admire because of how smart and witty she could be. Hell, Garrus teased me a few years later about how jealous he got because I'd always hog his favorite quarian all to myself whenever we were in the same room, and she'd let me hug her.

I think he was just jealous that I was hogging her legs. He really does like Aunt Tali's legs.


End file.
